U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero in New York temporarly blocked a strike by the flight attendants last week at the last minute. He will be ruling later this week on whether additional time should be granted in order for the airline and their flight attendants to talk. However, he has not given any sort of a date or outline in regards to making a decision on allowing the flight attendants to strike.
The Association of Flight Attendants wrote to Marrero that informal contact with Northwest in recent days shows that "meaningful negotiations are not possible at this juncture." Northwest has little incentive to negotiate because it already got the pay cuts it wants when it imposed new terms, the union wrote."As a consequence, AFA believes that the only path to a negotiated settlement will be through the flight attendants' exercise of their legal right" to strike, their letter said.
SFGate
Here is what the judge needs to do. Give the flight attendants and the airline three days to talk. Make the new deadline Saturday 11.59pm East Coast time. Then the judge needs to say, if there has been absolutely no progress at all, give the flight attendants permission to walk out the door with picket signs in hand. Allowing to strike on Sunday will cause fewer distruptions because business travel may not be affected until Monday.
NWAAFA.org
NWA.com
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